Stuart Patterson

Like many Shimer students and alumni, my academic and professional career has led me in a variety of directions. My first college experience was in art school at the Cooper Union in NYC; I finished my bachelors at St. John's College, Santa Fe, another great books program. For five years after that, I worked as an arts and activity therapist in northern California before getting my Ph.D. in Liberal Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. My dissertation studied race relations and collective memory across the 20th century. 

Since I started at Shimer College in 2004, I have taught all the courses in our core curriculum, which covers the Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. I've also taught electives on the history of economic thought, on theories of metaphor, on the history and phenomenology of reading, on museology and, more recently, on classical Chinese fiction, on power, and on the relationship between the human and the animal in a course I call "Humanimal." I am also devoted presently to helping students and community members build a crochet coral reef for the city of Naperville, a piece of collaborative public art that hearkens back to my art school training.

One interest that unites my interests and teaching is a commitment to "play" in the classroom. In the Shimer School, we are blessed to conduct our classes around octagonal tables in which students lead the inquiry into whatever materials the course features. My single biggest commitment as a professor is to listen for the flow of students' curiosity and commitment and to respond in kind. 

Selected Scholarship

"Teaching Chinese through Classic Literature: A Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration" in A Transdisciplinary Approach to Chinese and Japanese Language Teaching (TACJ): Pedagogical Collaboration Across Languages, Disciplines, Communities, and Borders. with J Sun, 2023.

“Democratic Nostalgia: Arthurdale, West Virginia as a ‘Living Museum.’” in Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities, 2nd Ed. Amy Levine, ed. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press, 2017. 

“Will We Always Have The Poor Among Us?” JStor Daily Feature Article, January 11, 2017.

“Confessions of a Well-Trained Mind,” My View column, Liberal Education, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Summer 2016).

“Social Programs and the New Deal,” in Interpreting American History: the New Deal and Great Depression, ed. Aaron Purcell, Kent State University Press, 2014.

Courses Taught

Why - and What - Should We Read?

Theories of Metaphor

The Black Chicago Renaissance

History and Principles of Economic Thought

Two Chinese Novels

What is Power?

Sociology of Religion

Philosophical Pragmatism

Humanimal

Classic Texts, Contemporary Issues

The Spaces and Places of Community Museums